Brussels, 24/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 24 November, the Court of Justice of the EU cancelled provisions of the regulation of the Council halving the rates by which the salaries of some 46,000 European civil servants were increased from July 2009 due to a “sudden and serious deterioration of the economic situation”. By unilaterally deciding on this revision, “without recourse to the specific procedure laid down for the staff regulations”, the Council exceeded its still scope of competences, it ruled. However, the effects of the cancelled articles will be maintained until a new regulation decided upon by the Council to avoid a discontinuity in the salary regime enters into force.
This judgement comes further to an appeal brought by the European Commission on 6 January (EUROPE 10050). The Commission challenged the provisions of the Council regulation of December 2009, setting at 1.85% the pay rise of the European civil servants with effect from 1 July of the same year. The Commission argued that the Council did not have the “discretionary powers” to allow it to depart from the proposals presented in November 2009, providing for an increase of 3.7% on the basis of the criteria defined in Article 3 of Annex XI of the staff regulations (Ed: these criteria are as follows: - cost of living in Brussels, where most of the European civil servants work; - changes between the month of July of the previous year (2008) and the month of July of the year underway (2009), of the net salaries of the national civil servants of eight European countries which represent 76% of EU GDP).
In its ruling, the Court rules that the Commission is in the right, pointing out that only the exemption clause in Article 10 of the above-mentioned annex provides for a specific procedure to change the salaries which allows the Council to depart from the Commission's proposal in order to take account of the serious economic crisis. The fact that this procedure is more “burdensome” (proposals of the Commission by request of the Council, involvement of the Parliament) than the normal procedure “does not dispense the Council from the need to observe the rules stipulated in the said annex”. As a result, the Council should have used this procedure or, at the least, asked the Commission to present proposals earlier than when it did in summer 2009, “as the consequences of the economic crisis could already be seen during the reference period”.
The Council has stated that it is studying this judgement and its procedural implications. (F.G./transl.fl)